Paul Ruttledge. Indeed I am, if you'll let me. There's nothing I'd like better.
Tommy the Song. But are you going to learn the trade?
Paul Ruttledge. Yes, if you'll teach me. I'm sure I'll make a good tinker. Look at that now, see how I've stopped that hole already.
Charlie Ward. [Taking the can from him and looking at it.] If every can had a little hole in the middle like that, I think you would be able to mend them; but there's the straight hole, and the crooked hole, the round hole, the square hole, the angle hole, the bottom hole, the top hole, the side leak, the open leak, the leak-all-round, but I won't frighten you with the names of them all, only this I will say, that, when you've learned to mend all the leakages in a can—and that should take you a year—you're only in the first day of the tinker's week.
Tommy the Song. Don't believe him. He's only humbugging you. It's not the hardness of the work will daunt you.
Paul Ruttledge. Thank you. I was not believing him at all. I'm quite sure I'll be able to mend any can at the end of a week, but the bottoming of them will take longer. I can see that's not so easy. When will you start to teach me that, Charlie?
Charlie Ward. [As another tinker comes up.] Paddy, here's the gentleman I was telling you about. He's going to join us for good and all. [To Paul Ruttledge.] Wait till we have time and some quiet place, and he'll show you as good a cockfight as ever you saw. [A woman comes up.] This is his wife; Molly the Scold we call her; faith, she is a better fighter than any cock he ever had in a basket; he'd find it hard to shut the lid on her.
Molly the Scold. The gentleman seems foolish. Is he all there?
Paddy Cockfight. Stop your chat, Molly, or I'll hit you a welt.
Charlie Ward. Keep your tongue quiet, Molly. If the gentleman has reasons for keeping out of the way it isn't for us to be questioning him. [To Paul Ruttledge.] Don't mind her, she's cross enough, but maybe your own ladies would be cross as well if they saw their young sons dying by the roadside in a little kennel of straw under the ass-cart the way she did; from first to last.